Until you have a baby, you’ll never understand how it’s possible to go through so many baby wipes in one day.
Babies tend to fill their diapers from 10 to 12 times a day, so that’s already at least 10 wipes a day. If you’re thinking more realistically, you’re probably going to use one to three wipes per diaper change, escalating the number to around 20 to 30 wipes a day.
As you can imagine, using 30 wipes a day is not beneficial to your bank account. Don’t forget to factor in the usage of wipes for spit ups, wiping sticky hands, and cleaning various spills. Baby wipes are an essential part of a parent’s diaper bag, so the thought of giving them up is simply not an option.
In recent years, research has shown that baby wipes contain a significant amount of plastic - 80% to be exact - that ends up in landfills all over the world. In our evergrowing need to cut back on plastic to save our environment, baby wipes are awfully wasteful and unnecessary.
For this reason, cloth wipes have become more popular in recent years and more and more parents are turning to them. If you’ve found your way to this article, chances are that you’re also converted, or at least considering cloth wipes. Our article will aim to answer some of your questions about cloth wipes.
The Number of Cloth Wipes You Need
The number of cloth wipes that you need will depend on how old your baby is when you’re beginning this journey. Newborns tend to need more wipes than older babies, so you should adjust the number of wipes you purchase by the age of your baby. As your child gets older, they’ll need fewer wipes because they’ll need fewer diaper changes.
If you’re using cloth wipes right from newborn age, we’d advise you to purchase around 50 wipes. To avoid you having to do laundry every single day, 50 wipes will give you around four days of wipes to use. The majority of cloth wipe users have found that 50 is the ideal number of wipes to stock up on.
Having said that, some factors will affect how many of the cloth wipes you need to purchase.
Diaper change frequency
As we’ve already mentioned, the most obvious factor to consider is how often your baby goes to the bathroom and how often you will need to use the wipes. If your child needs 10 diaper changes a day, you’re going to need to purchase many more wipes than if your child only needed one diaper change a day.
If you’re stocking up ready for the arrival of your baby, you obviously won’t know how many times you’ll be changing diapers. In this instance, you should use your best judgment to estimate how many you’ll need.
If the average amount of diaper changes for a newborn is 6 to 9 per day, this is a good indicator to base the number of cloth wipes you’ll need on hand.
How many wipes per diaper change
It’s a known fact that men tend to use more wipes than women when changing diapers, so you should determine who is going to be on diaper duty the most. If the father is going to be the chief diaper changer, it might be a good idea to purchase a few extra wipes to allow for the extra usage.
Of course, it’s impossible to know exactly how many wipes you’re going to use before your baby has been born, and no two diaper experiences are the same. You might need only one wipe for one change and then eight wipes for the next one.
One or two wipes are the average amount that is used per diaper change, so for a newborn, you’d be looking at an average of 10 to 20 wipes a day. This is a safe number of wipes to go with per day because it is unlikely that you’ll run out of your daily allowance. However, you might want to stay on the safe side and order many more than 10 per day.
Remember that cloth wipes are larger and thicker than baby wipes, so you’ll have more surface area to use with only one wipe. This might affect how many wipes you use per diaper change.
Laundry schedule
When are you planning on doing your laundry? Newborns create a large amount of laundry, so expect the schedule to become much more frequent. Most parents tend to do laundry every other day; however, you might want to try and stretch this out to save on energy and water consumption.
The frequency of your laundry will decide how many wipes you need to purchase. If you’re using an average of 12 wipes a day, purchasing 50 wipes can keep you covered for up to four days. However, if you want to purchase an entire week’s worth of cloth wipes, you’d need more like 90 wipes to ensure that you always have enough.
Don’t forget your spares!
There is nothing worse than thinking that you’re covered for an entire week of diaper changes, only to be faced with numerous nightmares that require five wipes each. Before you know it, you’ve used all of your wipes and all of the dirty ones are piled up in the laundry room just waiting to be cleaned.
To avoid every parent’s worst nightmare, you must have enough spare wipes hidden away so that you can spring for them if you’re in a pinch. This will cover you from unexpected accidents, large loads, and the ignorance of your friends and family members.
What we mean by this is that cloth wipe users often get into a rhythm that they use to ensure that they have enough wipes to last for a set number of days. However, when relatives are visiting and kindly offer to take the task of changing your baby’s diaper, they might not be clued in on this routine.
Before you can stop them, they’ve used 10 wipes and show no signs of stopping! To avoid having to quickly start the washing machine and throw your routine into disarray, spare cloth wipes can be very beneficial and are essential to most parents.
